Incisive commentary from leading voices in the world of compliance

TI notes that there are significant problems with professionals in the field. AML compliance is deficient, in part as a result of “insufficient awareness of and commitment to anti-money laundering obligations among professionals”

In March, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly for new legislation to force EU countries to keep public registers of all parties in trusts in their jurisdiction. Beneficial owners would only be able to maintain anonymity if they could prove to the authorities that making their beneficial ownership public would put their personal safety at risk.

On 3rd April 2017, the UK Treasury gained access to new penalties for individuals and firms that breach UK financial sanctions. Under the new rules, any persons deemed to have been involved in serious breaches after the first of April 2017 may find themselves liable for penalties of up to £1 million or 50% of the value of the breach, whichever is higher.

In the olden days of the Third Money Laundering Directive (written on vellum by monks, you may recall), the distinction was drawn between KYC records (yes, way back before CDD was born) and transaction records. The former had to be kept for at least five years from the date of the end of the business relationship, and the latter for at least five years from the date of the completion of the transaction. But this time round – see Article 40 of the Fourth Money Laundering Directive – the line has moved.

As regulatory compliance initiatives move toward utilizing machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), what effect might the increased efficacy of AML programs have on developing nations and small financial players without large compliance budgets?

In a cover story for Dawn, Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper, journalist Khurram Husain writes that money laundering has become central to the normal functioning of the country’s economy. Speaking to Amos Wittenberg, Khurram explains how this came to be and whether it is likely to change any time soon.

If it is genuinely the Conservatives’ aim to strengthen the UK’s response to white collar crime, scrapping the SFO would be counterproductive. The agency is a world-leading repository of expertise on financial crime. In recent years it has taken a number of courageous decisions to mount prosecutions in complex and demanding areas of the law that a lesser agency would have filed as ‘too difficult.’

All told then, the UK should be in a good position to rigorously prosecute breaches of anti-money laundering regulations. But according to a report published in The Times in March 2017, it isn’t happening.

The European Council has added three states to the Annex 1 list of non-cooperative jurisdictions, dubbed the EU tax blacklist, saying they have failed to make commitments at ‘a high political level’ to address issues ...

Victims of a fraud which leads them to transfer money to a con-artist are typically losing nearly £3,000 each, new figures show.
The cost of so-called authorised push payment fraud has been calculated by UK Finance, ...

Fitness instructor Ed Lumsden was trying to log in to his online bank account last week when he discovered HSBC (HSBA.L) had closed it without warning.
Lumsden, who counts British television presenter Davina McCall among ...